Review

A cassette tape placed inside a hand-assembled matchbox case, all with a strictly red-and-black color scheme. Adorned with a skeleton bedecked in what appears to be royal Aztec-gyptian regalia. All housing seven tracks, 27-odd minutes of blown-out scratchy black metal, analog as fvk.

It's every kvlt moron's 2x3" wet dream.

For all its effort towards being hipster-hobo black metal sat gently in a box of self-worth (sold out as well, by the way), Grinning Death's Head's Golden Dawn demo doesn't skimp on the content. It's a core rich with bruiser punx riffs framed by excursions into wavering lo-fi doom (intro "Golden Cross", as well as "Serpent Pillar" and "Silver Chord") and, with "Seven Rays," something else entirely. The nearly 8-minute closing track pushes out with a different energy, a twiddling-chord post-something surge boosted by a bouncing jazz-esque bass lick, occasionally slinking serpentinely through the haze of static before re-submerging.

While the slower, more ambling tracks cut the constant barrage of palm-to-the-chin riffs and snare-rape, the latter items make up the intensely enjoyable majority of an exceptional demo. The slight militaristic stomp of "Morning Star" pauses before jolting otherwise unimpeded into the complex, messy riffing of "Rising Planes". "Body of Light" too, like its ilk, slams around like a elk stag caught in a garage. Golden Dawn cranks all the right knobs. It's filthy. It's catchy. It's long enough to satisfy yet short enough for it's rough edges to be palatable. Perfection in relation to form.